When a consumer product company launches a new brand, a team of very smart professionals methodically conducts market research until they know where everyone in their target market lives, how much money they have, what cars they drive, and what they eat for breakfast. If that team came back and said, “We just can’t find any information about our target market,” there would be serious consequences. Their superiors would question their every move, trying to determine what went wrong and whose fault it was.
These same questions should be asked of recruiters, HR professionals, or executives who say they “can’t find any” diverse professionals. Are we really to believe that these same companies that can dig up information on anyone, anywhere, can’t tell you where to find African American accountants or Latino lawyers or Asian American marketing professionals?
I don’t care what your excuses are; in my fifteen years working in the corporate world and my five years as a recruiter, I’ve heard them all, and they are almost always lame.
While there are as many excuses for diversity failures as there are companies to make them, the following are the excuses I’ve heard most often:
“We can’t find any.” Well, you won’t find any if you don’t look. They are out there. Forget anything you’ve heard about the numbers of diverse job candidates shrinking. As with any statistical analysis, you must examine the numbers you read with care — and the reality is that every year there are more qualified diverse candidates, not fewer. For example, while it is true that the percentage of accountants who are diverse has been shrinking in the past few years, the overall pool of accountants is growing — so the aggregate number of diverse accountants is actually larger today than it was several years ago.
But these numbers shouldn’t matter to you anyway. The issue is not whether there are enough diverse candidates to go around to every organization. The issue is whether you can attract and recruit enough for your organization. This is called competing for resources — something your organization likely does every day. If the challenge was to find new clients, your organization would scour markets and databases, conduct focus groups, and generally do whatever is necessary to find them. … Now let’s think about what would happen if you applied the same targeted efforts that have worked on other initiatives. Imagine, for example, what would happen if you Googled “accountant” and “Howard University” (one of the leading historically black universities in our country). The names and networking contacts that come up will be largely African American. Or even better, search for the “top 50 African American accountants” on LexisNexis. If you still “can’t find any” after you’ve called everyone in the results list, and everyone they recommend, and everyone they recommend, I might actually believe that you can’t find any. But it won’t happen. You’ll end up with so many candidates you won’t know where to begin.
These methods probably sound elementary to you — even insultingly basic — but lots of folks have never tried them. Trust me, to this day I am still meeting with organizations that have never taken these basic steps forward.
“Our search firms didn’t bring us a diverse slate.” OK, so fire them. What would you do if you were trying to recruit a new CFO, and your recruiting firm brought you nothing but marketing people? There are many excellent recruiting firms out there today that can provide you with more diversity talent than you’ll know what to do with. You just have to hire them. Again, this is about business logic. Your search firm didn’t find any because they didn’t really look; they are paralyzed by the same excuses that you are. The reality is, like most organizations, traditional search firms rely on their formal and informal networks to source candidates — and these networks have historically been bereft of diversity professionals. … Find a recruiting firm with strong connections to diverse communities, and you will have all the talent you need.
“Diversity candidates just don’t make it through the hiring process.” This excuse is a corollary to “We can’t find any.” If your diversity candidates aren’t competitive, it is likely because whoever selected your candidates has “settled” in terms of fit and job qualifications rather than spend the extra time to find highly qualified diversity candidates. But they’re out there, and it’s your job to find them. You’ve got to get rid of the idea that to hire a diversity professional is to lower your standards or to somehow “settle.” If candidates aren’t making it through the process, go find better ones. That’s what you would do with majority candidates, right? Of course, there’s always the chance that the issue is with your hiring managers, whose biases are
preventing diversity candidates from making it through. If this is the case, get real about it. By putting a greater number of highly qualified diversity candidates through your process, you will either move your numbers, or very quickly discover that you have hiring managers with active biases. Either way, you’ll have the solution to moving your numbers.“Diversity doesn’t affect us.” … With people of color currently numbering 100 million and growing exponentially, it is only a matter of time before this explosion impacts every organization’s customers and workforce. (Jon Meacham, The New Face of Race, NEWSWEEK, Sept. 18, 2000.) For some organizations — hospitality firms or consumer goods manufacturers, for example — the wave has already hit. For others — such as financial services and technology firms — the wave is further offshore but still approaching like a tidal wave. No matter which category you are in, you must have a plan and act aggressively. If you don’t, you will lose customers, talent, money, and market share. If this sounds like a breach of fiduciary duty, well, it just might be.
“Diverse professionals don’t want to work here — there is no one here like them.” … The majority of diverse professionals I’ve worked with will work anywhere for the right opportunity.
I certainly don’t profess to speak for all minority professionals, but I will say that most of the diverse professionals I know long ago accepted the fact that to “make it,” they would have to adapt, at least at some level, to majority culture. Being the “only one” is not ideal — everyone feels more comfortable around people like them — but it is not usually a blocking issue. It is no surprise, however, that majority professionals underestimate this willingness on the part of diverse professionals to work outside their comfort zones, because most majority professionals have never had to make that choice.
“We don’t have the resources.” This is corporate-speak for “Diversity isn’t that important.” When you don’t have enough resources to achieve a goal, you are really saying the goal isn’t a high enough priority for your organization to fund it. Maybe that’s the right call for you. Maybe not. But let’s at least be real about it. When Staples CEO Ronald Sargent wanted to recruit more minorities, he knew that the effort would require more than just lip service. He also realized that c
asting as wide a net as possible would bring in some winning candidates and some that wouldn’t make the cut. So he approved temporary funding for more than 50 college students, who worked at the company for a trial period. At the end of the trial period, many students landed permanent jobs. Thus, Staples was able to adjust its recruiting strategies to align more closely with its stated commitment to diversity: “To understand why diversity is so important to us, you don’t have to look farther than
your nearest Staples store. Our customers — whether they’re shopping in our stores, online, or through Staples Contract or Business Delivery — are a mosaic of different cultures, ethnicities, genders, and ages. So it’s not surprising that we strive for a workforce and a supplier network that reflect the diverse multicultural ‘face’ of our customers.” (From Our Commitment to Diversity, Staples Inc.)
Take a look at what your company is funding for diversity. Is this the proper allocation of resources to prepare your company for the next 50 years? If so, I’ll buy this excuse. If not, you’ve got some work to do in reassessing priorities and reallocating resources. The point is, you can’t use this excuse unless you’ve actually done the homework and factually determined that your limited resources are better spent elsewhere. Do that, and at least you are exercising sound business judgment.
“We hired a diverse senior executive, but that hasn’t moved the numbers at all.” Well, no kidding. Senior executives do very little hiring, so they are not in a strong position to impact the complexion of your workforce. Also, the idea that a “figurehead” minority will somehow move numbers is greatly misguided. Managers will not be inspired to hire more Asian people by seeing an Asian general counsel. And candidates won’t necessarily come to your company just because you’ve got a prominent minority executive. In fact, that strategy could backfire, because you could be telegraphing the idea that your commitment to diversity stops at window dressing.
“Our hiring managers won’t cooperate.” Does the word insubordination mean anything to you? The only reason managers “don’t do anything” is because there is no consequence if they don’t. Make their compensation depend on achievements in diversity hiring, and you’ll see changes. Make promotions turn on hitting diversity numbers, and you’ll get results. This is not new stuff. You’ve got to motivate your people to achieve results, as with any other strategic initiative.
“We only promote from within.” To say that you are committed to building diversity but only hire from within is a joke. These two priorities are directly at odds. It’s like saying you are committed to growing flowers, but have a policy against planting things. It can’t be both ways. So decide which priority is most important, and move on. Once this decision is made, the rest can be sorted out.
“We made a mistake by promoting a lot of minorities too soon, before they were ready.” Since when does a successful organization quit after stumbling? If it didn’t work, figure out why, address the legacy issues, and try again and again until you succeed. Minorities are successfully promoted every day. So you’ve got to look at who you promoted and why it didn’t work. Were there cultural issues? Address them through training. Was there a mismatch between job and skills? A problem with fit? Maybe the problem lies at the roots of your diversity program — maybe you are not trying hard enough to find the right candidates, and are “settling” because you have bought the excuse that “you just can’t find any.”
“We did diversity training and nothing happened.” Diversity training will help create an environment that is welcoming to diversity, but it won’t drive numbers. You must give your hiring managers the tools to effect change. The key to driving diversity numbers is to recruit large numbers of highly qualified diversity candidates. Training without a strong recruiting program is like buying a great new lawn mower without gas — it goes nowhere.
“We don’t have the time or resources to train a bunch of new people.” There is a myth out there that diversity candidates are less educated and less experienced than majority candidates, and so will require costly training. This is complete nonsense, and goes back again to that weak “I can’t find any” excuse. If you take the time to hire qualified diversity candidates, you will spend no more resources training them than on anyone else.
Once you’ve stripped away your disabling excuses, you’ll be ready to move on to building a productive, successful diversity recruiting program, and growing your business.
From the book Without Excuses: Unleash the Power of Diversity to Build Your Business by Joe Watson. © 2006 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.